Badminton: Saina Nehwal is World No. 3 again

New Delhi: Riding on her Swiss Open triumph, ace Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal has regained the number three place in the latest world ranking.

Saina, who missed a couple of tournaments early in the year because of a nagging ligament injury and then suffered early exits from the Korean Open and the All England Championships, notched up her first title of the season in Switzerland last week.

The 21-year-old now has 69721.2637 points in her kitty and is currently behind Shixian Wang (83506.4) and Yihan Wang (73988.9106) at one and two respectively.

The Swiss Open title was her third Grand Prix Gold title win after Chinese Taipei (2008) and the Indian Open (2010). The girl from Hyderabad also won four Super Series finals in Indonesia (twice), Singapore and Hong Kong over the last two years.

In men`s singles, Commonwealth Games bronze medallist P Kashyap was at the 21st place with 38415.2559 points, while Ajay Jayaram moved to 28th. Anand Pawar and Arvind Bhat are at 42nd and 45th spot respectively.

Commonwealth Games gold medal-winning women`s doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa dropped one place to 19th spot, while Jwala and V Diju slipped two spots to 18th in mixed doubles.

In men`s doubles, Rupesh Kumar and Sanave Thomas jumped seven places to be placed just outside the top 20 bracket at 21st place.